meddle with the governing of men." We wonder whether there has been
a single democratic leader either in France or England who has not
incessantly felt the full force of Danton's ejaculation. There may,
indeed, be simpletons in the political world who dream that if only
the system of government were made still more popular, all would be
plain sailing. But then Sir Henry Maine is not the man to write for
simpletons.

The first reason, then, for surprise at the immense stress laid by the
author on the proposition about the difficulty of popular government
is that it would not be of the first order of importance if it were
true. Our second reason is that it cannot be shown to be true.
You cannot measure the relative difficulty of diverse systems of
government. Governments are things of far too great complexity for
precise quantification of this sort. Will anybody, for example, read
through the second volume of the excellent work of M. Leroy-Beaulieu
on the Empire of the Czars (1882), and then be prepared to maintain
that democracy is more difficult than autocracy? It would be
interesting, too, to know whether the Prince on whose shoulders
will one day be laid the burden of the German Empire will read the
dissertation on the unparalleled difficulties of democracy with
acquiescence. There are many questions, of which the terms are no
sooner stated than we at once see that a certain and definite answer
to them is impossible. The controversy as to the relative fragility,
or the relative difficulty, of popular government and other forms of
government, appears to be a controversy of this kind. We cannot decide
it until we have weighed, measured, sifted, and tested a great mass of
heterogeneous facts; and then, supposing the process to have been
ever so skilfully and laboriously performed, no proposition could be
established as the outcome, that would be an adequate reward for the
pains of the operation.

This, we venture to think, must be pronounced a grave drawback to the
value of the author's present speculation. He attaches an altogether
excessive and unscientific importance to form. It would be
unreasonable to deny to a writer on democracy as a form of government
the right of isolating his phenomenon. But it is much more
unreasonable to predicate fragility, difficulty, or anything else of a
particular form of government, without reference to other conditions
which happen to go along with it in a given society at a given ti